That lead to graves; and in the silent vault,
Where lies your own pale shroud, to hover o'er it,
Striving to enter your forbidden corps,
And often, often, vainly breathe your ghost
Into your lifeless lips;
Then, like a lone benighted traveller,
Shut out from lodging, shall your groans be answered
By whistling winds, whose every blast will shake
Your tender form to atoms.

_Eur._ Must I be this thin being? and thus wander?
No quiet after death!

_Cre._ None: You must leave
This beauteous body; all this youth and freshness
Must be no more the object of desire,
But a cold lump of clay;
Which then your discontented ghost will leave,
And loath its former lodging.
This is the best of what comes after death.
Even to the best.

_Eur._ What then shall be thy lot?--
Eternal torments, baths of boiling sulphur,
Vicissitudes of fires, and then of frosts;
And an old guardian fiend, ugly as thou art,
To hollow in thy ears at every lash,--
This for Eurydice; these for her Adrastus!

_Cre._ For her Adrastus!

_Eur._ Yes; for her Adrastus:
For death shall ne'er divide us: Death? what's death!

_Dioc._ You seemed to fear it.

_Eur._ But I more fear Creon:
To take that hunch-backed monster in my arms!
The excrescence of a man!

_Dioc. to Cre._ See what you've gained.

_Eur._ Death only can be dreadful to the bad:
To innocence, 'tis like a bug-bear dressed
To frighten children; pull but off his masque,
And he'll appear a friend.

_Cre._ You talk too slightly
Of death and hell. Let me inform you better.

_Eur._ You best can tell the news of your own country.

_Dioc._ Nay, now you are too sharp.

_Eur._ Can I be so to one, who has accused me
Of murder and of parricide?

_Cre._ You provoked me:
And yet I only did thus far accuse you,
As next of blood to Laius: Be advised,
And you may live.

_Eur._ The means?

_Cre._ 'Tis offered you.
The fool Adrastus has accused himself.

_Eur._ He has indeed, to take the guilt from me.

_Cre._ He says he loves you; if he does, 'tis well:
He ne'er could prove it in a better time.

_Eur._ Then death must be his recompence for love?

_Cre._ 'Tis a fool's just reward;
The wise can make a better use of life.
But 'tis the young man's pleasure; his ambition:
I grudge him not that favour.

_Eur._ When he's dead,
Where shall I find his equal!

_Cre._ Every where.
Fine empty things, like him, the court swarms with them.
Fine fighting things; in camps they are so common,